President Sirisena invites USA investors to Sri Lanka

The tilting of the balance in favour of Sri Lanka is also reinforced by the reference to a Sri Lankan judicial mechanism in the resolution.

Passed without opposition, the resolution acknowledged that awful crimes were committed and called for a process of truth, justice and reconciliation.

“Tamil people seek justice for their disappeared relatives, extrajudicial killings, torture and the investigations are only against perpetrators of human rights law”, said M.K.Shivajilingam, a member of the Northern Provincial Council.

United Nations appointed commissions have investigated the last phase of the war and have produced the following three different reports, on the conduct of the adversaries, the Sri Lanka state and the Liberation Tigers, and have documented alleged violations of war-crimes and crimes against humanity that the commissions reasonably believe to have occurred.

“We did not achieve this under any pressure, stress or arm twisting”.

Elections come and go, but Sirisena has a promise to keep!. “The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid, was bold in telling that accountability “requires more than a domestic mechanism” and he called for a special hybrid Court”, the TGTE said. “The Sri Lankan Government continues its series of arrests of our fishermen while fishing in their traditional waters”, Jayalalithaa said. The unity government of Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been conciliatory in its approach since taking over.

“If not for that pledge, the economy would have collapsed before the war could be won”. “All political parties and all religious groups will be included in the discussion”. The silver line of hope for us all is the global component of this proposed mechanism and the honest and genuine cooperation of the new government as promised by its Foreign Minister here in this aula.

They added that they “deeply regret that references to demilitarization of the North-East and an increased role for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) which were included in the initial draft of the resolution have been removed”. The government is expected to give its written report on implementation in March 2017, which is 18 months away. But victims groups and human rights organisations will expect to see real and measurable progress -particularly on relatively straightforward issues like the repeal of the Island’s Draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act- within weeks. Advancing justice when the State has proclaimed not a single civilian was killed will be hard, and HRW does not appear to be willing to admit that.